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Holiday (1938) Or How Live to Work and Make Money Cannot Buy Happiness

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Holiday (1938) Or How Live to Work and Make Money Cannot Buy Happiness HOLIDAY (1938) OR HOW LIVE TO WORK AND MAKE MONEY CANNOT BUY HAPPINESS DÉBORA ESPINOSA ANTÓN Abstract In 1938 was released the second big screen version of Philip Barry’s play “Holiday: a comedy in three acts”, written in 1928, about money and happiness only a year before the crash of 1929. Ten years later, Donald Ogden Stewart, Philip Barry’s partner at Yale and the inspiration for the Professor Nick Potter character, wrote the script to take the play brought to the big screen by George Cukor. Two years before filming the movie, in 1936, Ogden became Chairman of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, considered during the 1947 HUAC’s hearings as a fellow traveler. At the script Professor Nick (Edward Everett Horton) at the end of the story is forced to travel to Europe in a hurry for no apparent reason. Holiday (1938) becomes a story about power, money and ideals, where young Johnny Case (Cary Grant) must choose between happiness and accumulate great wealth, offering a critical insight about the idea of "to live to work", and questioning the need to accumulate assets and wealth when there's no time to enjoy and spend. KEY WORDS: Ideology, money, wealth, power, happiness. Resumen En 1938 se estrenó la segunda versión para la gran pantalla de la obra teatral de Philip Barry, “Holiday: a comedy in three acts”, escrita en 1928, sobre el dinero y la felicidad tan solo un año antes del crack de 1929. Diez años más tarde, Donald Ogden Stewart, compañero de Philip Barry en Yale e inspiración del personaje del Professor Nick Potter, escribió la adaptación cinematográfica que fue llevada a la gran pantalla por George Cukor. Dos años antes del rodaje de la película, en 1936, Ogden se convirtió en Presidente de la Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, considerada durante las audiciones de la HUAC de 1947 como “compañero de viaje”. En el guion el Professor Nick (Edward Evertt Horton) al final de la historia, se ve forzado a viajar a Europa sin razón aparente. Holiday (1938) se convierte en una historia sobre el poder, el dinero y los ideales, donde el joven Johnny Case (Cary Grant) debe elegir entre ser feliz o acumular riqueza, ofreciendo una crítica a la idea del “vivir para trabajar”, y cuestionando la necesidad de acumular bienes y riqueza cuando no existe el tiempo de disfrutarlo y gastarlo. PALABRAS CLAVE: Ideología, dinero, riqueza, poder, felicidad Linda Seton (Katherine Hepburn) and Johnny Case (Cary Grant) at the playroom in Holiday. “Few such plays examine the sweep of economic history directly, but instead trace its impact on individual lives, on relationships, family affairs, the daily struggle for survival, and the dreams of security and freedom central to such plays, and particularly evident in Money and Holiday.” FISHER, James. “Money is our god here”. The comedy of capital in Edward Bulwer- Lytton’s money and Philip Barry’s Holiday. Introduction In 1947 the House on Un-American Activities hearings used the analysis conducted by the FBI in the Report; "Communist Political Influence and Activities in the Motion Picture Business in Hollywood," in this document some premises were given to analyze movies in search of communist propaganda. Among the films that were being contemplated as threatening or subversive, was Frank Capra’s classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), which was said: "... the film represented a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a "scrooge-type". So that would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by communists... ""In addition (...), this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters" (FBI, 1958: COMPIC IX, 160). In this report, the films analyzed by the FBI were mostly from previous years to hearings. But the associations or leagues defined as communist fronts mostly had been consolidated in the late 1930s. For this reason, we decided to analyze films of this period, in which authors involved, were later included in the blacklist or named during the 1947 to 1952 House on Un-American Activities hearings to Hollywood. Holiday (1938) is a George Cukor’s classic comedy, and employs the same team as in the famous The Philadelphia Story (1940). Released in 1938 with George Cukor as director and Sidney Buchman1 and Donald Ogden Stewart as screenwriters, Holiday was the second adaptation of the play under the same title by Philip Barry, also author of The Philadelphia Story play. We decided to analyze this film because of its background. In these reports conducted by the FBI, there was a section dedicated to the writers, actors and directors, mostly related to the Communist Party, the profile of Donald Ogden Stewart was as follows: "Donald Ogden Stewart, writer, member of the League of American Writers and former president of that organization. A member of the Hollywood Anti -Nazi League, very active member of the American Peace Mobilization, and a member of the Communist Party" (FBI, 1958: COMPIC IX, 160). Sidney Buchman was also named as a Communist in 1947 hearings by Roy M. Brewer and in 1951-1952 by Karl Tunberg and Edward G. Robinson and Donald Ogden Stewart was named in 1947 by Samuel Grosvenor Wood, John Charles Moffit, James K. McGuiness, Morrie Riskind, Fred Niblo Jr. and Richard McCauly, and in 1951-52 hearings by Martin Berkeley and Edward G. Robinson. Altogether, Sidney Buchman was named 3 times, and Donald Ogden Stewart 8 (ESPINOSA, 2012: 107-113). Holiday (1938) is a controversial film by the way the rich are presented. Cukor said in an interview, referring to the 1938 version of Holiday, "” (...) when the 1 Sidney Buchman just like Donald Ogden Stewart was named on several occasions by fellow professionals (friendly witnesses) in the hearings in 1947 and 1951 to Hollywood. play premiered in 1928 was very real, the characters were rich, played the stock market and no one was concerned about the world situation." But ten years later, the Great Depression had beaten the lives of the citizens of the country, was about to explode a war in Europe and "and the reality was quite sinister. In a totally different context, the film seemed to say to hell with the rich.”” (TORRES, 1992) Whether called attention the way Capra presented Lyonel Barrymore’s character, Henry F. Potter in It's a wonderful life as a "scrooge-type". The presentation of the patriarch of the Seton Family in Holiday is not an exception, in the article "Money is our God here" James Fisher, described him as "(...) Holiday's Edward Seton, the patriarch of a wealthy family and a far less likeable exemplar of "Big Business", a man inclined to measure all things by their cash value or the currency of social position" (FISHER, 2011: 28). Screwball Comedy, Capitalism Critique, or both? During the 1930s and within the framework of the Great Depression in the US, the film played a crucial role as the formula for citizens who had been affected by the crisis to escape. Coinciding with the crisis and the arrival of the talkies, allowed the appearance of new, more realistic themes for movies, “What made these films so “realistic” was that they collapsed the boundaries between popular drama and the stories of chaos and disruption that permeated the newspapers” (MAY, 2002: 136). In addition to social issues; unions, gangs, immigration... “Even by the late 1920s, Hollywood movies did not present a monolithic view of class relations. Like labor-capital films, a number of cross-class fantasies contained a biting anti-authoritarian edge that poked fun at the values and aspirations of various classes” (ROSS, 2002: 85). Another genre that won presence between 1930s and 1940s was the Screwball Comedy. Scholars like Shumway and Curtas analyze Screwball genre through Stanley Cavel studies on marriage and remarriage comedies. Both criticize the closed Cavel’s style analyzing the movies, sometimes not including titles in the genre of understatement when it comes to identifying possible meanings in some scenes and not admitting the three-dimensionality of some scripts ... “the major cultural work of this films is not the stimulation of thought about marriage, but the affirmation of marriage in the face of the threat of a growing divorce rate and liberalized divorce laws” (SHUMWAY, 1991: 7). Holiday is a complex film, is a romantic comedy in which the main character, Johnny Case, has to choose between two women. “Holiday is a filmic meditation on the trope of self-reliance and the perennial American tension between lofty Romantic longings and the cold pragmatics of wealth.” (CURTAS, 2011: 1). These women represent two opposite worlds of society despite being sisters. On the one hand Julia, Johnny’s fiancée, belongs to the former and archaic New York aristocracy, symbolizing capitalism, ostentation and appearance. Furthermore Linda, who is introduced to Johnny at the beginning of the story, is presented as a clear opposite to Julia; Linda is restless, artistic, has dreams and illusions, and don’t care about money. Shumway, Curtas and Ruiz consider this duplicity of situations, the reason to allow include Holiday into the Screwball genre. “Romance emerges in these comedies as a playful negotiation, often approaching the status of warfare, in which desire and defeat, togetherness and separation, postponement and fulfilment are the ultimate rules. The future partners are established as a couple only after they have shared some experiences and have built a common ground, which they mostly do through experiment and play” (RUIZ PARDOS, 2000: 156) Johnny Case, Ned Seton at the Seton Johnny Case and Linda Seton at the House hall.
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